THE OUTER LIMITS: The Sixth HAND
by Dan Bivens
Summary: Some forty-plus years AFTER the experiment that had turned Gwyllm Griffiths from simple, though unsatisfied, miner into a mutated Man from far into humanity's Future, he returns to become much, much more!
1. Chapter 1

**THE OUTER LIMITS**

"**The Sixth HAND"**

by: Dan Bivens

"_**There is nothing wrong with your computer. Do not attempt to run a hard-drive scan. We are controlling this link. If we wish to make it louder, we will alter your computer's volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will mute it to less than a whisper. We can change your display screen to a soft blur. Or sharpen it to maximum pixel clarity. For the next few story-chapters of this site's link, sit quietly and we will control all that you read. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from your computer's processors to... The Outer Limits!"**_

Chapter 1

"Cathy," came the muted Irish-accented voice of a sixty-something man, whose once dirty-blond hair had long ago turned gray. Sadness suffused said voice over the woman with whom he had made a life. Far after such as she had, quite literally, brought him back from the brink of The Unknown. Some forty-plus years earlier. "I love you so, Cathy. I don't know...what I'll do...without you."

"It's all right, my love," Cathy cooed, with a hint of the self-same accent, through a torrent of torturous agony created by the cancer claiming her once-supple Self. A cancer spreading rapidly with no hope of halting it or forcing such into remission. A cancer caught far too late via an actual medical diagnosis. "I...have had a life of Love...few could claim. A life...of Happiness...with just us two. My only regret...is in never giving you...a child."

"You know such was my fault, my love," the dutifully devout husband said, as a great grief threatened to dispel his smile, so tremulous yet so True. "Ever since that experiment I participated in so long ago..."

"Shh," she said softly, whilst touching tip of finger to the lips of the Love of Her Life. "Let my last memory..._our_ last memory...be of...this one last kiss."

Even through the body-wide woe of unspeakable pain, Cathy allowed her lips to receive such a kiss from the only man, in all of the small mining community in the Lancashire area, in the beginning, and, in the decades since, all of Dublin...

"Forgive me for not being a better provider, Cathy..."

"Forgive me...for having to...leave you alone...Gwyllm..."

With that whispered exchange, charged with more emotion, pure and unrelenting, than any other couple could declare to feel for forty-plus years of connubial bliss...

"Goodbye...my love..."

"Cathy...?"

...twixt Gwyllm Griffiths and Cathy Evans-Griffiths...

"God, no...Cathy..."

...both brought together through the hardships of so small a community...

"Cathy...!"

...as well as the work, sinister said some or miraculous for a few, of Professor Mathers. The man who made it possible for a simple miner, whom hated both trade and town!, to taste the fantastic future of the evolution of Man in the dimness of Distant Time.

Something left as memory for Gwyllm Griffiths, as he and Cathy, wed almost immediately at the end of said experiment, thanks to Cathy Evans' internalized Love for a former friend-cum-monstrosity.

After which, in order to put that Past as far behind them as any couple could, the newlyweds left the Lancashire area for Dublin. Where Gwyllm was no longer doomed to the mines. And where both could, at long last, know the nature of True Love.

And, now, it would be a greatly grief-stricken Gwyllm who would, after the wake for his wife was followed by her burial back in the Lancashire area from whence the two of them had hailed...

"Even though I'd cast aside all recollections of the incredible power that came with my 'mutation' into a man from some six million years into humanity's Future," said the still-sad Gwyllm Griffiths to the headstone proclaiming the "Here Lies..." epitaph detailing Cathy's birth and death, long after the leaving of the few mourners from said township.

"Even though my love for you made it easy to shove such far from my mind, through the long and glorious years of a marriage most might call heaven-sent. Now that you are gone, my love. Now that I am alone and back in the town that turned me from hate-filled Human to...something else. I must, once more, claim that which was within my grasp so long ago.

"For, only by becoming the Ultimate Evolutionary Human...a Living Vortex of Cohesive Consciousness...can I hope to merge my multi-million year old mind with one only recently loosened into the Cosmos. Only then can my mind merge, eternally...with yours, my love."

After allowing an aged, shaky hand, already covered in liver spots twixt wrinkled flesh, to tenderly touch the smooth surface of his wife's three-and-a half foot tall cenotaph...

"I can only hope that Professor Mathers," sniffled Gwyllm seconds before leaving behind his beloved's graveside, "lives still. And still lives here."

"But," Gwyllm swore sinisterly to himself, whilst pulling a pistol from one pocket, "should he be reluctant to help my 'advancement'..."

No more needed to be said, as the gray-haired, wrinkled, though still spry, previously happy husband of Cathy Evans-Griffiths made his way toward the countryside estate he still remembered from a pre-married Past, wherein such as he had tasted Man's Future.

A taste that lasted through these long, yet exceedingly ecstatic with Cathy at his side!, years.

A taste which would now, finally, be taken to its absolute limits.

And, quite likely, far further than ever imagined.

Even by Professor Mathers.

END OF CHAPTER 1


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Again, I'm very sorry, sir," stated, for the second time, the newest Irish master of the manor that had once been the site of a scientist centuries ahead of his close-minded contemporaries. "As I said, Professor Mathers passed away some six-and-a half years ago. I, then, purchased the property not very much after. As to the equipment you're speaking of, from what I had heard, a Canadian purchased them."

"But do you know his name? Please, sir, this is of extreme importance to me!" desperately pleaded Gwyllm, more determined than before to finish something started by the late Professor four-plus decades earlier.

"Mm," hummed the new owner of the manor, straining to dredge forth a name the man had heard only once six-and-a half years ago. "Hutchinson. Yes, that's it. John Hutchinson. Some sort of strange-minded scientist type. A lot like Professor Mathers, I gather, from what I'd been told. Save for the fact he had longish hair and seemed lost to constant thought and..."

"Thank you, sir!" rudely interjected Gwyllm, as his own thoughts swiftly shifted to selling all that he owned in Dublin, after returning there of course. Then purchasing a one-way airline ticket so as to fly straight-away to the precise region wherein this John Hutchinson resided. It's exact location quickly called forth via a Dublin library's public computers.

In the time it would take to fly from Ireland to Canada, across the Atlantic Ocean, the extremely excited, yet undeniably nervous, Gwyllm Griffiths quickly recalled all that had happened forty-plus years earlier...

When an experiment in accelerated evolutionary action, from within every single cell of his all-too-Human body, became enacted. Unleashing energies that reached down deep into his DNA to literally facilitate an indescribably rapid transmutation that was anything but painless.

One that, after affecting said cells' DNA, automatically continued its forward-reaching transmogrifications until, so fast it seemed instantaneous from an outside observer's point of view!, Gwyllm had become a huge-brained, godlike man from some six million years hence.

It would wind up being the unrelenting Love, unspoken until that specific point, of Cathy Evans that brought back the original Gwyllm Griffiths. Rather than thrusting him into the Ultimate Future of Human Evolution, as the incredibly intelligent/psionically super-powerful Gwyllm had sought in such a single-minded fashion.

Something that still, forty-something years after the fact, tugged at his forethoughts. Whilst wed to Cathy, whom he quickly came to love more than Life itself!, such quasi-sinister stirrings remained buried beneath a contentment most might never know.

But now that such as she was no longer alive...

After arriving, eventually, at Vancouver International Airport, Gwyllm used what little money remained to rent a car equipped with a voice-activated/voice-responding GPS system.

Then he drove the short distance necessary to place him in the area wherein resided John Hutchinson, the creator of what the Dublin library's computers called The Hutchinson Effect. No doubt done with some of the super-scientific equipment previously built by the late Professor Mathers.

About twenty minutes later, having traveled the 11.6 kilometers from large airport to precise apartment point, a tired yet still-excited Gwyllm came face-to-face with what many might imagine a "mad scientist" to look like.

Only this "mad scientist" was mild-mannered and exceptionally personable. And, as such, very approachable, considering a complete stranger from Ireland now stood in his standing-open doorway...

"Mr. Hutchinson, my name is Gwyllm Griffiths. And I have come to propose a once-in-a-lifetime experiment that might just make those who scoff at you now...suddenly sit up and take very serious notice."

END OF CHAPTER 2


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Are you sure you want me to do this, Mr. Griffiths?" asked the scientific maverick named John Hutchinson. His lopsided spectacles and frizzy shoulder-length hair making him seem ever more a mad scientist-type than the crisply groomed, years-deceased Professor Mathers. "I've never placed a living being into this chamber before. Most especially not a person."

"Don't worry, Mr. Hutchinson," a half-smiling/half-smirking, both somewhat sinisterly, Gwyllm Griffiths offered in order to reassure this seat-of-his-pants scientist. "I've done this before...but it's been a long time. And you've rearranged the overall layout of the device. You've also added to it. But...it should still work to transform me. And, if it does...you, John Hutchinson, will no longer be looked upon as the leader of the lunatic fringe of your, uh, field."

Though Hutchinson was not now, nor at any time prior to this person's arrival at his apartment door, a seeker of sensational attention, his scientific curiosity was such that this strange experiment would, indeed, be done.

A flip of a switch caused a semi-metallic door to rise and expose the interior of a chamber previously only used to focus frequencies and energies in order to create The Hutchinson Effect.

Now, instead of inanimate objects, ranging from bowling balls to bottles to paper cups, evidently defying gravity for the duration of the energetic Effect...

...a human named Gwyllm Griffiths, well into his sixties, sat on a makeshift stool. Patiently awaiting the activation and manipulation of a machine made all the more massive and strange by the gradual addition, starting six-and-a half years earlier, of working parts to Professor Mathers' mechanism.

"Ready?" Hutchinson asked, somewhat shakily, as he paused just prior to causing said chamber door to drop shut.

With an even more sinister smile/smirk, the elderly-and-alone Gwyllm readily replied, "More than you can ever know. Proceed."

Soon, the sealing of said door was promptly followed by a seemingly random manipulation of the monstrous machine's various switches, knobs, and buttons. Its internal whine swiftly rising as the strange aggregation of unknown energies it produced were completely directed at its target...

Gwyllm Griffiths.

Through the semi-metal chamber door's squarish glass window, the same that had been seen on Prof. Mather's machine so many decades earlier, the physical transmogrification from Man of the Present to Man of the Future could be carefully scrutinized...

"My God..."

John Hutchinson had seen strange reactions from articles he'd placed inside said chamber before. Normally making an anti-gravity eventuality seem much more than hypothetical, though such was still hotly debated by constituent scientists and the public-at-large.

But never the evolutionary leaps now occurring at a rate of tens of thousands of years per minute. Then hundreds of thousands per minute. Until, ultimately...

Millions per minute.

Before the final few millenniums swiftly passed for the Irish-accented aging man, which would allow him to transmutate into the Vortex of Cohesive Consciousness he so wished to physically assume...

Puh-pop! POP! Zzt! ZZZZ-zzzt! REEE-eee-rrrrrr!

Not only the electricity so essential for powering the Frankensteinish machine made and maintained by John Hutchinson, but also such supplying power for two entire city blocks, suddenly ceased...

"Oh, my..."

...not only plunging John's apartment proper into a deepening darkness brought about by the gradual arrival of evening...

"No! It's not enough! Not enough!"

...but halting the super-fast transmogrification of Gwyllm at a probable point of evolutionary advance some six_teen_ million years into Man's Extreme Future.

"Nnnn-EERRRR!"

CRRRRRRRR-Crang! BLLL-BLAAM! KREEEEEE-eeeeeeeeeee!

As his self-maintained battery-powered generator brought emergency lighting on-line inside the overcrowded-with-a-wide-variety-of-devices dwelling, John Hutchinson was struck into shocked silence by what his eyes beheld...

"Jesus..."

Where there had been a normal Human mere minutes ago, there now stood, on more muscular than normal little legs with a neck as thick as the trunk of a tree!, an unimaginably massive head. More brain than anything else. With not two, not four, but six arms-and-hands whose extremely long, multi-knuckled fingers seemed almost like tentacles instead of dexterous digits.

"Wh-what have I d-done...?"

"What you have done is failed, Mr. Hutchinson!" came the mentally delivered reply directly from the massive multi-million year advanced mind of a Mutated Man to the mad scientist-type suddenly afraid for all humanity. "Failed to fulfill our agreement! I was supposed to ascend to a cohesive consciousness that would afford me the ability to merge with my one and only Love! To intertwine my intellect with that of my recently deceased wife! With Cathy."

In the peaceful pause of such tremendous telepathic output, John thought only of escape...

A thought easily ascertained by this monstrosity-made-real slowly closing the short distance between them in order to grasp this estranged scientist within hands much more than mere redundancies in regards to their rise from two-to-six.

A palpable psionic pulse of power absolute actually inflicting genuine agony that also served to chase such thoughts from the meager mind, compared to this severely transmutated man!, of John Hutchinson.

"P-please," pleaded John as his tightly held-by-six super-hands body was stiffened by the telekinetic/telepathic power, approaching that of a god!, consistently assaulted his entire nervous system. "I...I can r-repair the m-machine...and t-turn you b-back!"

"Back?" laughingly, both in thought and through the nearly-depleted-by-Time mouth, replied this Far-flung Futuristic Man-Monster. "As I had said to Prof. Mathers once I had auto-evolved into a Future Human of one million years...would you wish to return to an ape? The answer is a resounding...no!"

That "no" carried more pure power, agonizingly so!, than anything remotely imaginable. Especially in respect to someone still clutched so tightly by six long-fingered hands, whilst a telepathic/telekinetic intellect of some sixteen million years hence held him so close.

Psionically as well as physically.

"EEE-YIIIIII!"

As blessed unconsciousness claimed the mangled mind of John Hutchinson, the six hands holding him released their seemingly steel-like clutch. As an impossibly powerful telekinetic brain, bigger than a boulder resting atop muscularly altered-for-maximum support body-and-legs!, literally hurled him aside...

Krr-krash! Thud!

...before forcing the entire side of the apartment's sturdy structure to blast outward as if from the explosive eruption of several pounds of C-4. Then telekinetically lowering his immense form to the ground beyond, whilst declaring loudly with both massive mind and almost lost-to-Time mouth...

"The whole of humanity must be brought under my power! But, first...I shall destroy this city! An example must be made!"

END OF CHAPTER 3


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4/Conclusion

"This is Jeffery Clayton at CNN with continued coverage of the late-breaking story that started in and around Vancouver, Canada," professionally stated the handsome news reporter currently quite comfortable and safe in a newsroom far removed from the death and destruction taking place well beyond said studio. "One that has aggressively progressed down through Washington state and Oregon in mere hours, to end up in the Greater Los Angeles area of California. As I understand, we have live coverage of what's happening coming up now..."

Switching once more from Jeffery Clayton, sitting so safely in a CNN studio, the fear-inducing images of a massive-headed/brained monstrosity dominated television screens across the country. Showing the very recently ultra-evolved Gwyllm Griffiths psionically hovering high over the streets of downtown L.A., whilst using said telekinetic energies to lay waste to whatever, and whoever!, was around him.

The streets were shattered, as if by the multiple impacts of small missiles rather than the pure psionic force of a Futuristic Man of Sixteen Million Years. Cars were either overturned and burning or had been hurled headlong into the sides of broken buildings.

Those fortunate enough not to be injured or worse ran around in a manner similar to images of war-torn towns in some third-world locality.

Only this was no foreign army molesting whole townships nor bringing harm to the otherwise innocent citizenry.

This was the work of a single, solitary, super-advanced, big-brained being with six distinct arms-and-hands. Each having extremely long fingers that seemed more like tentacles due to the their fluid motility.

Eyes were as wide as the wheels of a child's tricycle, having evolved so as to see thousands of times more than those of the normal Human. Thus, nothing and no one escaped Gwyllm's wide-ranging awareness.

And, coupled with a telepathic power that could, quite literally, scan the thoughts of up to ten thousand normal Human minds in a single instant...

Such made it easily possible for his super-psionics to swiftly lay waste to such as Seattle, Washington and Salem, Oregon. Also easily destroying all armed opposition posed so hopelessly by not only the police of said cities in said states, but also those state's National Guards.

And, now, such was being so sadistically repeated in the aphoristic heart of the great state of California.

Even now, the police and SWAT desperately tried to turn back this hovering-via-telekinetic control anomaly.

But to no avail...

"Lt. Tyler," loudly called out one of the police officer's to his immediate commander, "SWAT's no more able to stop this thing than us! Bullet's just seem to stop several inches before hitting it's...head!"

"I know, Travis!" Lt. Arthur Tyler loudly replied, even as he took the time to reload his police-issue Glock with one final ammo clip. "But just what the hell would you suggest? Run like hell and let that thing do whatever it wants to this city? This state!"

"S-sorry, sir," slightly stammered Officer Richard Travis in so hushed a fashion as to no doubt never even reach the ears of Lt. Tyler. Especially considering the tremendous amount of gunfire, from regular police and SWAT, sent straight toward the transmogrified Gwyllm Griffiths. Then Officer Travis reloaded his own Glock with his own final ammo clip.

And, as such furious hellfire still continued to harmlessly head up toward this Futuristic Man of Sixteen Million Years...

"The fools!" Gwyllm loudly proclaimed, more with his peerless telepathic power than spoken words from a mouth Time, and telepathy, had all-but-obliterated. "As I am certain the many news networks have already reported in regards to my triumphant 'march' through not only Vancouver, but Seattle and Salem...no form of normal weaponry made by Man can harm me! No bullet nor RPG can penetrate the telekinetic 'screen' I have easily erected about my ultra-advanced person! Nothing can harm me. Nothing! But I can most definitely inflict harm on them..."

As something eerily close to a maniacal laugh, again more from the massive mind than diminutive mouth of the multi-million year evolved individual!, echoed through the minds of men and women fighting for their immediate domain...

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Puh-poww! Puh-poww! Puh-poww!

Brrraaattttttaaaaa-brrttt-brrttt!

...even as pistols, shotguns, and M16s did no more than amuse the massive-minded monster easily hurling aside police and SWAT alike with the merest fraction of psionic exertion...

"Geee-yiiiii!"

"Eeee-ahhhh!"

"Garrrr-iiiiii!"

He then telekinetically destroyed patrol cars and SWAT vans in a fashion such as they would do when finished with a paper cup that they crush prior to casually tossing it aside...

KRRAANNGG!

KRRASHH!

BOOOMM!

...and just as easily psionically igniting the gas in said vehicle's tanks in order to exert still stronger mental domination over the half-leveled Los Angeles area.

As to SWAT, it's never-say-die commander, Captain Gloria Ivan, one of the few women to so prove herself in tense situations and standoffs so as to rise rapidly to the top of L.A. SWAT's food chain...

"C'mon! Keep firin' at that freak! We can't back down now! We've already lost teammates to this bastard! We can't let 'em die in vain! Attack!"

As brave as Captain Ivan and her remaining SWAT members, indeed, were...

"Fools! Will they never learn?"

...Gwyllm, sixteen million years more advanced than everyone else, was, put simply, far too powerful to be stopped. Or even slightly slowed.

"Nooooo--"

Captain Gloria Ivan, and pretty much the rest of SWAT, as well as most of the regular police still slugging it out with what amounted to an artificially created god!, were nearly-obliterated by no more mental exertion than a normal Human might manage to shoe away a housefly.

"Fire at will!"

That shout, simultaneously delivered via helmet headsets due to the surrounding noise of destruction and death dealt telekinetically, came from Colonel Esteban Cortez. The flack-jacketed commanding officer heading up the just-arrived California National Guard.

Armed with more than M16s and hand pistols, they unleashed a helluva lot more firepower from mounted weapons as well as heavily-armored tanks' turrets...

BRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAA-BRRAATTTAAA-BRRTT!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

THUUMM! THUUMM! THUUMM!

But just as had been the case in Salem, Oregon before, as well as Seattle, Washington earlier still...

"Your ignorance makes me ill and angry!" psionically said the greatly-progressed Gwyllm Griffiths, mirroring a moment from forty-plus years earlier when a _six_ million year advanced man vocally proclaimed precisely the same as motorcycle police dared to defy him.

"GYIIIIIIII!"

KRRAANNGG! Baa-da-BOOOMM!

"Gwyllm, my love, please...stop."

That sudden psychically perceived voice sent shivers down what spine remained of the big-brained antagonist wantonly laying waste to any and all lying in his all-powerful path.

A virtuous voice as readily recognizable now as it had been for, lo, so many years of matrimonial harmony and happiness.

One having returned to a prevailing Fabric of Life-Consciousness from which even such as a sixteen million year advanced man like Gwyllm must always draw in order to truly exist.

Yet one that, somehow, due to a strange psychic connection wrought through four decades of True Love and True Happiness shared by Husband and Wife...

...had basically brought her back in what less-evolved individuals might name "ghost". Yet was, much more accurately, that ethereal part of Cathy Evans-Griffiths that had, at the exact instant of her physical demise due to cruel cancer, that had latched onto her greatly grieving husband. The Love of Her Life...even after her death.

"Cathy...?"

Though that stunned response from the Futuristic Man of Sixteen Million Years, both through projected thought and simultaneously spoken word, took only a single second of real time...

...such seemed more a minor eternity to the immense mind, in sheer size and psionics, within the boulder-sized brain belonging to the evolved individual dealing death and destruction so heartlessly.

Though no one else could hope to hear her, let alone see her, such was well within the range of reality for an ultra-advanced super-Human named Gwyllm Griffiths.

"Cathy...my love..."

And such also caused the telekinetic screen surrounding and protecting the rapidly progressed person still psionically hovering high over the shattered city streets littered with the dead and dying...

"Fire!"

Though that bloodcurdling scream came from a barely alive Colonel Cortez, those still standing, police, SWAT, and National Guardsmen!, unleashed all they had left in bullets and explosive shells in a cacophonous fury as indescribable as it was destructive...

"EEEEEEEEE-IIIIIIIIIIIII!"

The mangled mass that remained, after dropping bloodily down to the torn-asunder streets, bore very little resemblance to the big-brained freak that had threatened millions mere hours earlier.

Gwyllm's flesh was laid low and still. Definitely dead by anyone's hasty estimation.

But that part of him that was still True returned to the unseen Fabric of Life-Consciousness as his Beloved had done days ago...

As countless others had done, and would continue to do, for more millions of years than Gwyllm Griffiths had artificially evolved to experience.

In the end...Love did, indeed, conquer all.

_**We now return control of your computer to you. Until the next time this link takes you from the computer's processors to...The Outer Limits!**_

END


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